


Willow Schnee's Good Day

by notHarold



Category: RWBY
Genre: Atlas is a Terrible Place for Women and Children, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, How Do I Tag, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Abuse, Using Dad's Credit Card for Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-24
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-07-16 13:22:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16086950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notHarold/pseuds/notHarold
Summary: Willow snoops around Jacques' bills on one of her few sober days, and it quickly becomes the best day she has had since she realized that he's a terrible person. Well, after she has a talk with Whitley about using his father's credit card.





	Willow Schnee's Good Day

**Author's Note:**

> Cross-posted from HollowSentinel on Tumblr. Check it for original works and rambling.
> 
> Thanks to Velvserver for discussing the ideas behind this fic. Keep an eye on Spudato for the AU that inspired this.

In Willow's opinion, waking up was the second worst repeating event of her life. Either sobriety or a hangover gripped her when dawn arrived. If the world felt particularly cruel, she woke up in Jacques' bed, having mistaken it for her own. Or worse, thinking him to be the man he tricked her into seeing. She thanked her lucky stars that his desire for her company weakened with her descent into alcoholism. The nights when he would call for her "companionship" were few and far between, and Jacques never desired her presence beyond their carnal acts. Thankfully, she didn't require the bottle to forget the loveless affairs. Jacques' selfishness and lack of skill handled that nicely. Not that she wouldn't help her mind in forgetting anyway.

Sadly, that lack of memory appeared to have made an unwanted expansion. Wine was absent from Willow's bedside and so too was the reason for it. She supposed one of the servants could have cleaned up or thought to "help" her. Klein knew better than to deprive her without reason, and the others should have been briefed. Perhaps it was one of her children's birthdays. No, she hadn't completely lost track of the date. Not yet. Winter's twenty-second was due in the coming month with Whitley's fifteenth to follow two months later (though Jacques would no doubt delay any celebration to consolidate it with his own fifty-fifth two weeks later). Weiss' eighteenth had passed earlier that year. Wait, was it her own?

A check of her calendar confirmed it. It was her fiftieth birthday

Joy.

Willow took a breath, exhaling gently, not sighing. She wondered if her wish of the last twenty years had finally been fulfilled. A few taps sent her scroll crawling through the obituaries for two names, leaving her to work through a miserably sober morning.

Routine carved into Willow's body deep enough that she could manage it blackout drunk carried her through the morning, making her presentable in the event someone surprised her with a visit. It kept her nourished and fit enough to outlive Jacques and his parents, and it permitted her pleasant surprises such as untouched mail left for Jacques while he was off running her father's company into the ground. Notably, there was a credit card bill that she knew was due shortly. Perhaps this day wouldn't be so bad.

Hiding behind the excuse of ensuring Jacques wouldn't squander the Schnee fortune over interest charges, Willow opened up the bill and began to peruse his purchase history. It was short, a sign that it was for his personal card rather than the business card he so loved to abuse, but that only served to damn him more. Statues and busts of himself, books that he only wished to possess in a show of superiority, porn, a car he didn't even know how to drive, a new computer with specifications far beyond his needs—

Wait.

Willow scanned the document again. There, between the books and car: a subscription to a porn network. Her jaw went slack. Had the world finally seen fit to gift her with the start of clear justification to divorce Jacques? No, no, she couldn't be so hopeful, not after everything she had been through. There were other possibilities weren't there?

Jacques… would never buy a subscription for himself, and even if he did, he wouldn't do it in a way that so directly traced back to him. It was beneath him at best and unfit for a man of his status at worst. The time frame felt suspicious as well. Hadn't he called her to his bed that week? It certainly happened within the month. While far from clockwork, it had felt the way it had before and there had been no unnatural distance between then and the last time he took her to bed.

So… what? Willow furrowed her brow as she pondered the mystery. While Jacques was unloving, he wasn't unfaithful. At least, not in word or action. Any hint of infidelity could ruin him, and he guarded his status with the kind of fervor one would expect a decent person to use for their family. It was next to impossible for Jacques to make such a foolish mistake.

If it was a theft, it a was a brief one. Something that Jacques wouldn't notice on first blush. Perhaps Weiss? She certainly hated Jacques, having grown close to Willow's father before he passed and learning of what the SDC had once been. Even so, Willow was sure Weiss was more interested in usurping Jacques' position and restoring the SDC rather than poisoning his image and potentially dragging the company down in the process. She didn't have much time as Whitley grew closer to adulthood, but there wasn't enough pressure to stoop to this. If she simply wanted a subscription, she would have used her own funds squirreled away from prying eyes. Wait, she opted to stay in Vale over the summer. She couldn't have even if she wanted to.

Winter was absent, busy in the military. Though she too disliked Jacques, she was too law-abiding to try this sort of underhanded tactic. Never mind the fact that she hadn't visited in months and likely wouldn't for several more at soonest.

Whitley was too young… wait, no, he was fourteen and was raised in Atlas. She hadn't given him the talk. Had Jacques even given him the talk? Was it the same abstinence-only drivel that dominated the whole of Solitas? Whitley had the opportunity and means to do it. Jacques was in and out of the manor, and her son had been left behind several times, deemed too young, inexperienced, or in some cases a hindrance for several outings. Online purchases only required information. If Whitley had copied it down at some point, he could have used the credit card with no one the wiser. The minuscule price of the subscription would hide in the shadow of the other purchases. It would make enough sense for someone Whitley's age, wouldn't it?

Were there any other possibilities? Klein would never, and woe to any other in their employ to make the attempt. Such a minor purchase would be unthinkable when weighed against ongoing employment.

Willow took a breath and gathered her resolve. She forced herself to accept it: Whitley purchased a porn subscription with Jacques' credit card. Something had to be done. She was his mother, and Jacques would be furious beyond all reason. If he could scar Weiss and threaten her with blindness over something as meaningless as a lost duel, then who was to say what would happen to Whitley. Even so, there was no ignoring one fact: this would be awkward.

* * *

"Whitley," Willow addressed. Her son froze, unused to hearing her voice, much less sober. The steel in it, something she hoped would mask her discomfort, seemed to strike her son into blank obedience. What had Jacques done while she drowned herself? No, that was a matter for another time. The past could not be changed, and if she didn't act, he might not have a future. "Would you like to explain to Jacques what you used his credit card for?"

"I— I have no idea what you're talking about, mother," Whitley stuttered. He clasped his hands behind his back, wringing them if Willow read his elbows correctly. "I'm sure that I've done not— er, no such thing."

"Really," Willow deadpanned as she shook the itemized bill that she collected, encouraging it to unfold, taking the seconds it resisted to calm her nerves. "So then it was Jacques who paid for a subscription to the—" She checked the bill to confirm the name. Who named this? " _Sex Centre_?"

Whitley gasped, playing the fool even as a cherry red blush spread from ear to ear. "Father did what now?" He paused, expecting Willow to repeat herself. To his credit, her son held firm even as the silence passed from 'contemplating a synonymous phrase' to 'waiting for her disbelief to sink into him.' That he could resist Willow's flat stare at all deserved a trophy. Or maybe she had become soft. It had been years since she showed her spine. His act dissolved slowly, but before long he hung his head and asked, "What will be done with me?"

"If I have my way, nothing," Willow answered. "That's not to say you won't be punished," she added before Whitley could gawk at her response. "You _will_ be giving up the credentials you used and losing your scroll, but Jacques won't hear of it."

"Why?"

"I know you have enough of a grasp of him to realize that it won't end well," Willow stated. Whitley must have noticed the undercurrent of disappointment in her expression— a different brand from Jacques, but bearing the same message: you are better than this. She hoped it was true. Sometimes she saw Jacques in him. At other times, she saw a boy clinging desperately for any sense of control he could manage to take. He had none of Jacques' ambition, the defiance Winter used to escape, or the independence that Weiss used to straddle the line between rebellion and obedience. In lieu of that, she saw an imagination that surpassed her daughters'.

And it showed Whitley something terrible. Whatever he came up with made him as pale as a corpse, embarrassment giving way to raw terror. He cleared his throat. "May I— May I clear my history first?" he requested, his breath hitching.

"You may." While not something Willow ranked high on her known desires, avoiding learning of her son's kinks suddenly shot onto the list, somewhere above divorcing Jacques and below avoiding sobriety.

Whitley hurried, tapping out the commands before presenting Willow with his scroll. "The username is father's separated with underscores and fully capitalized," he noted. "The password is 'Sch3esAreTehBe5t' sans spaces, with the first letter of every word capitalized, 'the' misspelled to T-E-H, the first E in our name replaced with a three, and the S in 'best' replaced with a five."

For a moment, the information stunned Willow. "You used Jacques' name?" she confirmed, checking the interface and finding JACQUES_SCHNEE displayed proudly on the user profile. "You used his name." On a porn network, she left unsaid.

"Is that a problem?" Whitley asked meekly.

"How much have you used this account?"

"Um… I've… watched several videos."

Willow picked a video at random, checking for what she could do. "No comments? No ratings? Downloads?"

"No! None of that!"

Whitley yelped when Willow pulled him into a tight hug. "Thank you for this gift." It was the best she ever received. She would give Remnant a Jacques né Gelé that they would hate for years to come. Even if it was derided as a phony account, if she could convey even half of how vile he was through fake comments, even as a parody, then it would be her victory. She hoped that screenshots were still a thing. The company's public relations department and legal would do anything in their power to strike the source from the networks and web servers, but screenshots on personal computers and circulated on forums were forever. Four Seasons would eat it up.

"You're… welcome?" Whitley ventured. He remained stiff in Willow's arms, unsure of how to handle her sudden physical affection. In the end, he settled on patting her on the back. "Am… am I still in trouble?"

"You're being deprived of your personal link to the internet until I erase every track you've left for your father to trace back to you," Willow reminded her son, even as she kept him in her arms. It felt good to hug someone that wasn't composed entirely of garbage now that she actually felt the urge. "You'll be a step away from any messages or calls you receive for a short while too." At last, she released her son. "Though I suppose that's a good excuse for you to join me and learn your mistakes."

"Um…"

"No child of mine is going to be so easily caught," Willow said.

* * *

For the first time since her marriage, Willow went to bed satisfied. Spending time teaching Whitley the basics of hiding his data trails had been exhausting. It had taken a while for her son to stop thinking of the experience as a punishment and look at it as a learning experience, but once he had, it had been nothing but questions and confusion. Some of it was her fault having forgotten what it was like to not have ingrained security habits.

In spite of that, she and Whitley enjoyed the experience. It was almost as if they were family. A call from Jacques cut the dream short, but Whitley resolved to ask for the promise of more lessons before he rushed away with a new scroll in lieu of the one Willow had taken.

By the end of the day, he even wished her a happy birthday and sent along notice of a gift he acquired with the skills she imparted.

The rest of Willow's day had flown by as she dusted off her skills and severed the trail leading between the porn account and Jacques' credit card. That his finances were handled by the Schnee Dust Company made it both easier and harder, though not as much of the latter as she had initially feared. It sparked some concern in her. She hadn't lifted a finger in nearly twenty years and she could break through SDC network security from home on unoptimized hardware and tools she cobbled together from memory? Something wasn't right. She set her concern aside. She had bigger, more immediate plans, and they required the account to remain open and disconnected from the Schnee family, even if it bore the name.

Better still, when Willow's scan of the obituaries finished, she found one Gaspar né Gelé dead. Happy birthday to her indeed. One down, one to go.

Satisfied, Willow curled up in her bed sober. Tomorrow, she would play.

**Author's Note:**

> Fun Note: this is titled "Whitley Rolls a Nat1" in my files.


End file.
